It looks like several companies are learning what happens when you mess with the internet - and they're learning it the hard way. Several major companies have been hit by the collective powers of Anonymous after 4chan launched several distributed denial-of-service attacks. What many have been predicting for a long time now has finally happened: an actual war between the powers that be on one side, and the internet on the other. Update: PayPal has admitted their WikiLeaks snub came after pressure from the US government, and Datacell, which takes care of payments to Wikileaks, is threatening to sue MasterCard over Wikileaks' account suspension. Update II: Visa.com is down due to the attack. Update III: PayPal has caved under the pressure, and will release the funds in the WikiLeaks account.

My point was more that if people want change, they should do something that actually results in change. A traffic based denial of service attack only demonstrates that someone needs to better manage their network. Stop playing with .net toys, go out and work to effect change. A DDoS is not the appropriate response outside of getting media attention; they could have gotten media attention without it.

Don't like how the government is behaving, take it up with the government.

Don't like how a business is behaving, cancel your services from them.

DDos? It's like stealling copyrighted content because you are an "activist" sticking it to the big company but never actually bother to send them a letter. I'm all badass; I stole your content because I didn't agree with your pricing structure or some such thing. Your still getting sales from others and I'm actually helping get your content more widely spread to people with morals who will pay if they can't live without.. I'm really sticking it to the man.

One Yes Men prank would have more effect than the thousands of DDos.NET skript kiddies.

The masses of "Anonymous" sending letter to companies stating "These are the products/services you offer which would benefit me however, I can not do business with you as long as you continue to business this way. To date, you have lost ##$ of my sales dollars because of how you do business". Owners, Board of director members and investors are going to take notice when they receive many letter and consider what sales could have been this quarter.

A DDoS of packets; woopty. A DDoS of physical letters that cost the company resources and show exactly how much money they "left on the table"; ok, now we're actually doing something.

Also, Wikileaks has lawyers doesn't it? If a company breaks it's contract with you, you have the option to invite them into court. Or, do what Wikileaks did and take their business elsewhere.

I should clarify, my point is not that things should be changed. It's the ineffective method chosen for trying to make change.